Question on Snaking vs Running Mono/Stereo Lines and Colour Coding Conventions

[WilliamAshley]

I am in the process of hooking up two new 8 channel snakes and I started to wonder if there is a common colour to line sequence, in my mind with a little electronics training I am like do resistor colours make sense? Do snakes have a common convention for sequence or order like red blue etc. I notice when ordering snakes they don't seem to have a universal colour to number arrangement but it could just be the suppliers. Is there in fact a colour to sequence standard somewhere such as AES?

The other part to the question was, is running things single channel the ideal and snakes are a compromise? I am guessing some snakes may not have the same level of shielding so lower cost ones may introduce line interactions.

I'm just curious if anyone has thoughts on this, as I am pondering a bit what colour order I should be setting up my i/o when using snakes that do not come auto numbered.

[tacitus]

My snakes have all had numbered cores which don’t necessarily agree with the snakes’ line numbers. No matter; if you don’t ever “edit” them it doesn’t matter.

After about 20 years, I’m shortening and rebuilding some snakes and using spare cores as miniature mike cables I can hide more easily for live concert recording. I’m tending to use 1 or 2 pairs and the colours aren’t an issue for me - they’re all black!

[James Perrett]

I'm fairly sure that some of the snakes that I have use the resistor colour code while others just have numbers on the jacket.

Snakes usually use foil screened twisted pairs which are about as good as you can get for isolation as they have 100% shield coverage. Typical decent microphone cables use braided screens which usually have very slightly less than 100% coverage. So a snake could be said to be better than conventional microphone cables in that respect. Theoretically foil screened twisted pairs separated by a few cm might give you less crosstalk but we are talking about tiny numbers which are almost impossible to measure.

[ef37a]

The resistor colour code, at least the 3 colour system, is burned into my hind brain so that is what I would use. However, with the rise of SMT components the code is becoming redundant and so it might be as well to use the colours in CATX cable? Cannot see that going anytime soon?

When I first started work in the network industry I thought learning a new code would be difficult but surprisingly I can switch mentally between the two without problems.

The benefit of a colour code over numbers is that it can be read at some distance (and of course for us with dim, old minces!) This of course is the original reason it was developed for resistors.

Dave.

[James Perrett]

However, with the rise of SMT components the code is becoming redundant and so it might be as well to use the colours in CATX cable? Cannot see that going anytime soon?

I still see the resistor colour code widely used for ribbon cables - and, as I said in my previous post, there are snakes that also use that code. CatX only has 4 colours.

[ef37a]

However, with the rise of SMT components the code is becoming redundant and so it might be as well to use the colours in CATX cable? Cannot see that going anytime soon?

I still see the resistor colour code widely used for ribbon cables - and, as I said in my previous post, there are snakes that also use that code. CatX only has 4 colours.

Eight I think you will find James. Anyway...just a thought!

Dave.

[Wonks]

Of course if it's only for you, then anything goes. If everything is permanently being hooked in, then I wouldn't spend too much time on it. You only need to know which connector connects to which connector at the other end when doing the initial patching.

If it's for something that will be assembled and disassembled quite often, then I'd take more care over it, but if it's not just you who will be doing it, then personally I'd avoid resistor colour coding in case you have someone who is colourblind working on it. Numbering is safer in that context. You could of course use both methods.

[Arpangel]

Owing to my flood I’ve been thinking of rationalising my wiring, tried multicore looms, hated them, there will inevitable come a time when layouts change, faults occur that require just a couple if wires to be replaced, it’s much easer using separate cables than having to deal with a multicore, if you buy something new you’ve got to add extra cables anyway, best keep the flexibility of individual cables in my opinion.

[Sam Spoons]

I would go for the resistor colour code too though for an 8 way loom rainbow colours would work well enough plus white and many people would find it easier to remember (substitute black for indigo which everybody knows doesn't exist )

[Arpangel]

I would go for the resistor colour code too though for an 8 way loom rainbow colours would work well enough plus white and many people would find it easier to remember (substitute black for indigo which everybody knows doesn't exist )

Doesn’t exist? Isn’t it called "Mood Indigo"? it always goes next to "A Funny Kind Of Blue"

[Sam Spoons]

I don't care what anybody says, my old physics teacher said "if you think you can see indigo you are lying to yourself" and he was right

Owing to my flood I’ve been thinking of rationalising my wiring, tried multicore looms, hated them, there will inevitable come a time when layouts change, faults occur that require just a couple if wires to be replaced, it’s much easer using separate cables than having to deal with a multicore, if you buy something new you’ve got to add extra cables anyway, best keep the flexibility of individual cables in my opinion.

In my studio I installed trunking around the room and have individual FST tie lines from one side to the other and a couple of XLR and jack breakout panels.

[Arpangel]

I don't care what anybody says, my old physics teacher said "if you think you can see indigo you are lying to yourself" and he was right

Owing to my flood I’ve been thinking of rationalising my wiring, tried multicore looms, hated them, there will inevitable come a time when layouts change, faults occur that require just a couple if wires to be replaced, it’s much easer using separate cables than having to deal with a multicore, if you buy something new you’ve got to add extra cables anyway, best keep the flexibility of individual cables in my opinion.

In my studio I installed trunking around the room and have individual FST tie lines from one side to the other and a couple of XLR and jack breakout panels.

My stuff is "out in the room" so it would be awkward to have lines on the wall, without constantly tripping over things.

[James Perrett]

CatX only has 4 colours.

Eight I think you will find James. Anyway...just a thought!

All the CatX cables that I've seen have had 4 solid colours and then the same colours with white stripes on them.

Mind you, I don't have any Cat6 or higher cables here so have they changed the colour scheme?

[Moroccomoose]

Aren't most commercial snakes coloured WROYGBI(Bl)V?

I use those little coloured dot stickers on my gear to match cable colours for my 4CM guitar seup - Makes life much easier setting up and breaking down between rehersal, gigs and home.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Assorted-Stick ... X3JFBCPOE8

[ef37a]

CatX only has 4 colours.

Eight I think you will find James. Anyway...just a thought!

All the CatX cables that I've seen have had 4 solid colours and then the same colours with white stripes on them.

Mind you, I don't have any Cat6 or higher cables here so have they changed the colour scheme?

Yes James so you have, w/o o/w w/g blu/ w g/ w/blu g/w wbr br/w. Eight variations but yes, sometimes there is no white stripe for the solid colour.

I have some CAT 7 cable, individually screened pairs and the colours are all over the shop!

Dave.

[Hugh Robjohns]

I am in the process of hooking up two new 8 channel snakes and I started to wonder if there is a common colour to line sequence, in my mind with a little electronics training I am like do resistor colours make sense?

There are numerous cable colour 'standards' — although none from the AES as far as I'm aware. The standard resistor colour code is a very popular and common one for multichannel cabling (and very similar to the rainbow order). For anyone unfamiliar it is:

1 Brown
2 Red
3 Orange
4 Yellow
5 Green
6 Blue
7 Violet
8 Grey

(9 White)
(0 Black)

I have this sequence on all my 8-way snakes mostly using coloured strain-relief glands or ident rings on the XLR or TRS connectors. I also use the first three or four colours in the same order on three- and four-way looms for mic arrays.

Belden's 8-pair multi cable (7880A) has the same sequence of inner cable colours, as do HOSA cables.

For larger multiways there aren't enough simple colours, so I use either numbered XLRs (with the number engraved into the XLR body and painted black on a silver shell), or breakout boxes with numbered sockets.

Engraving can be expensive, though, and in most multichannel cables the individual inner screened cable pairs have their channel numbers printed along the cable, or the cable will be marked with an ID label of some kind.

In the BBC standard we also used colour-coded stereo cabling with red/green for stereo Left/Right (same as plane/shop nav lights) and white/yellow for Mid/Sides connections. I routinely use cables with red and green outer sheaths for that reason all the time as it completely avoids any channel confusion.

In Germany, another popular standard cable colour sequence is widely used for professional surround sound installations (and also on some surround-capable plugins such as Schoeps' Double-MS decoder software):

L (1) Yellow
R (2) Red
C (3) Orange
LFE (4) Grey
LS (5) Blue
RS (6) Green
Lt (7) Violet
Rt (8) Brown

I can see no logic in this colour sequence at all and consequently have a devil of a job remembering it...

...but it gets worse in hi-fi land because the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) have yet another cable colour standard of:

L (1) White
R (2) Red
C (3) Green
LFE (4) Purple
LS (5) Blue
RS (6) Grey
LB (7) Brown
RB (8) Tan



Amongst several other insdustry standards, the IEC have defined a cable colour scheme for industry comms cabling. It uses a solid colour for the B-core (cold in balanced connections), and a coloured stripe along that solid colour for the A-Core (hot). It's simple and logical and easy to remember...

Except that Cat5 (etc) cables use exactly the same colour scheme but with the striped wire as the B-core (cold), and the solid colour as the A-core (hot)...

That configuration actually makes more sense to me, but it does open the door to Messers Confusion and Cockup!

Of course, the pair polarity doesn't matter at all in the majority of data transmission systems as polarity is irrelevant, but if wiring up an analogue breakout system using Cat5/6/7 cable it really does matter, so pay attention !

The IEC / Cat solid colour sequence is:

1 Blue
2 Orange
3 Green
4 Brown
5 Grey

...and these colours repeat for each additional set of five cable pairs.

The coloured stripes added to the solid colours in each pair also have a sequence, with the first five pairs having a white stripe. So the pairs are Blue/blue-white, orange/orange-white... and so on.

So the stripe colour sequence is:

i White
ii Red
iii Black
iv Yellow

That takes you up to 20 cable pairs... and after that it gets a lot more complicated with the stripes becoming double stripes (white/blue, red/blue, black/blue, yellow/blue... and so on!).

... well, you did ask!

The other part to the question was, is running things single channel the ideal and snakes are a compromise?

Not at all. If you need to change single channel connections a lot, then single cables make more sense and will be more convenient. Likewise if connections are at very different distances so need different cable lengths.

But if you need a number of semi-permanent connections between two devices a multipair cable makes a lot of pragmatic sense, and is far quicker and easier to rig and derig. All audio multicores intended for this purpose have individually-screened pairs (although some might also have an overall screen, too).

As far as interference and screening is concerned, there is no practical difference between individual balanced cables lying alongside each other and individually screened pairs within a multicore cable.

The same can't always be said for Ethernet cable breakout boxes, since the majority use an overall screen but not individual pair screens. However, if running balanced line-level signals interference and crosstalk are still very unlikely to be a problem. For mic signals, though, I'd always recommend individually-screen pairs (Cat7).

I'm just curious if anyone has thoughts on this, as I am pondering a bit what colour order I should be setting up my i/o when using snakes that do not come auto numbered.

If it's just for you then you can use whatever scheme you like, but the resistor colour code is the format I'd recommend.

[ef37a]

And just to add one more piece to that pile Hugh there is the T568A and T568B wiring differences! T568B is though pretty universal in UK.

Has anyone here tried to sort the colours on a 96 way Telco plug? It beat these old eyes even when they were fiftyish!

Dave.

[Sam Spoons]

I guess T568 A/B are to ensure the twist ratios of adjacent pairs is optimum while still allowing crossover cables to be made (probably now redundant given that all modern routers/switches/hubs are auto sensing for such things). Either way they don't connect consecutive pairs in sequence across the pins.

[ef37a]

I guess T568 A/B are to ensure the twist ratios of adjacent pairs is optimum while still allowing crossover cables to be made (probably now redundant given that all modern routers/switches/hubs are auto sensing for such things). Either way they don't connect consecutive pairs in sequence across the pins.

I looked it up..."T568A is to conform to the USOC standard and ensure backwards compatibility"

No! Me neither!

Dave.

[Sam Spoons]

So what is T568B for...?

[Hugh Robjohns]

To avoid having a standard standard!

[Wonks]

And to obviously prepare the way for T568C.

[Drew Stephenson]

I would go for the resistor colour code too though for an 8 way loom rainbow colours would work well enough plus white and many people would find it easier to remember (substitute black for indigo which everybody knows doesn't exist )

I thought it was magenta we can't actually see?

[Wonks]

I would go for the resistor colour code too though for an 8 way loom rainbow colours would work well enough plus white and many people would find it easier to remember (substitute black for indigo which everybody knows doesn't exist )

I thought it was magenta we can't actually see?

So you can’t see magenta, one of the fundamentals of the CYMK colour system?

No, indigo is the made-up colour, because 7 was (still is for some) a mystical number and they thought that the rainbow should therefore have 7, not 6 main colours, so ‘indigo’ was invented.

[ajay_m]

You can now purchase for very little money e-ink shelf tags which consume no power and are programmed via your phones NFC antenna from which they temporarily draw power. At some point someone will start making even smaller ruggedised versions which clip securely onto cables and then let you set them to whatever they're connected to, like scribble strips but for cables.